Recent Submissions

Modeling Vaccination Strategies for the Control and Eradication of Childhood Infectious Disease

The main body of this thesis deals with three related concepts pertaining
to vaccination strategies for childhood infectious disease. Chapter 2 deals
with the implications of reversion in the Oral Polio Vaccine on global polio
eradication programs. Chapter 3 explores the phenomenon of contact or
secondary vaccination in the use of live-attenuated virus vaccines. Chapter
4 explores the i...

Three Essays on Credit Risk Modeling

Credit risk is the risk of losses due to the failure to fulfil the obliged payment from a debtor or a counterparty. It is one of the three major components of risks that a bank faces as defined in the new Basel Accord. The credit risk literature has experienced similar rapid growth as the credit market itself. There are currently four different approaches to analyzing credit risk: structural...

Sulphur Isotopes in the White Pine Mine, Ontonagon County, Michigan

Ore specimens from the cupriferous zone of the basal Nonesuch shale at the White Pine Mine were analysed for sulphur isotopes, carbon and sulphide contents and boron. The results of the analyses were discussed in relation to a biogenic-syngenetic mineralization process for the ore body. A model, based on the δS³⁴sulphide frequency distribution, was developed to determine the δS³⁴ sulphate value...

Emerging Forms of Stratification in Higher Education: Comparing Canada and the United States

This study combines longitudinal and cohort analyses to provide an extensive examination of the nature of postsecondary stratification among Canadian and American universities and students in this era of unprecedented postsecondary expansion, institutional diversification, and rising competition for external research funding. Multiple statistical methods and a range of data sources are emplo...

MORPHOGENETIC AND IN VITRO STUDIES OF THE SHOOT APICES OF PHARBITIS CHOIS, STRAIN VIOLET IN RELATION TO PHOTOPERIODIC INDUCTION

In this investigation the methods of obtaining uniform and maximum
germination of seeds and of producing contamination-free cultures of
the shoot apices of Pharbitis nil have been examined and established.

Flowering response of vegetative seedlings of different ages has been investigated as related to photoperiodic induction. The sequence of orphological changes at the shoot apex h...

A Metric Interval-based Temporal Description Logic

Because of the importance of undecidability and the concern with the high complexity of automated reasoning, a few interval-based temporal description logics (ITDLs) have been designed. Moreover, most existing ITDLs are not able to specify the lengths of intervals. In other words, they are not metric. On the other hand, some domains (e.g., medicine) are inherently interval-based, and require a ...

ASPECTS OF THE MCMASTER INTENSE POSITRON BEAM FACILITY (MIPBF)

The McMaster Intense Positron Beam Facility (MIPBF) is a project based on the McMaster Nuclear Reactor (MNR) that aims to set up the first intense positron beam in Canada. The final intensity of the moderated positron flux is expected to be 109/s, which will make the positron beam one of the most intense ones in the world. A general review of intense beams, including the linac-based positron be...

KAISO: A NOVEL MEDIATOR OF INTESTINAL INFLAMMATION AND TUMORIGENESIS

Multiple studies have implicated the POZ-ZF and methyl-DNA-binding transcription factor, Kaiso, in the regulation of genes and pathways that are important for development and tumorigenesis. In Xenopus embryos and mammalian cultured cells, Kaiso has been implicated as a negative regulator of the canonical Wnt signaling pathway. Paradoxically however, Kaiso depletion extends lifespan and delays p...

Prediction and Prevention of the Progressive Degradation of Mining Screens using Wireless Vibration Analysis Tools

Vibration analysis (VA) is an extremely valuable technology which has been around for decades but its application and deployment techniques continue to grow. In 2006 W.S. Tyler, an industrial screening company, approached the McMaster Computing and Software department in search of a VA strategy to be used in their industry. The massive screens they produce vibrate with incredible speed and forc...

Walking toward the Call of Beauty: Beauty and Affect in Badami

This thesis provides a reading of Anita Rau Badami’s novels The Hero’s Walk and Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? The interpretive frame constructs a theory of affect to explore the human experience of beauty through a reading of Badami’s texts. This work’s approach to beauty is derived largely from Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just and from musings on beauty by Simone Weil. Following Wei...

Seismic response of free standing un-anchored objects is required to be studied in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) for their own integrity and potential interaction with the surrounding seismically qualified safety systems. Rocking response of a rigid body subject to seismic excitation is not very well covered in the nuclear standards except for an approximate method given in ASCE 43-05 where the d...

Multiparameter Sensitivity of Linear Time-invariant Networks

The realization of inductorless filters by means of RC-gyrator
structures has been investigated, and the sensitivity of their response characteristics with respect to supply voltage variations has been measured. A critical appraisal is made of the various multiparameter sensitivity functions which have already been proposed in the literature, and the methods by which these sensitivity crit...

Essays on Health and Retirement in Canada

My dissertation is composed of an introductory chapter followed by three
independent chapters focusing on two themes: health and retirement. The last chapter concludes. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter investigates whether self reported general stress is a mediator in the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and health. I use a six-year long panel of the Canadian ...

Moving Beyond the Individual: Activity-Based Modeling of Time Use and Travel Behavior Incorporating Intra-Household Interactions

The activity-based approach to the study of travel behavior implies a shift in focus from discrete trips to activities. A fundamental tenet of this approach is that individuals, when making their own activity-travel decisions, tend to interact with other members within a household. However, most activity-based research to date has been conducted at the individual level, but not at the household...

What we eat: Nutrition as the foundation to healthy aging

Good nutrition is essential to aging well. Much of the malnutrition that occurs in long-term care is preventable, attributed to the eating environment, food quality and the ability to access food. Join Heather Keller, a leader in research on nutrition and aging, as she shares her views on these issues and how we can provide a better foundation to healthy aging.

Addressing Nutritional Risk Among Older Adults in Ontario

An assessment of what is known about problems related to nutritional risk, options for addressing these problems, and key implementation considerations. The citizen brief was an input to a citizen panel on the topic of addressing nutritional risk among older adults in Ontario.

Vertical Integration, the Reconstituted State and the International Criminal Court: Expanding the Horizons of International Law and Governance

Established in 1998, the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) presents fundamental complexities for the concept of state sovereignty, while raising prospects for progressively developing international law and global governance in human security related areas. The Court's distinct history, negotiation and governance properties have significance well beyond international criminal justice....

X-Ray and Neutron Scattering Studies of Underdoped La2-xBaxCuO4 Single Crystals

The interplay between superconductivity, magnetism and crystal structure is a central issue in the study of the high Tc cuprates. The transition metal compound La2-xBaxCuO4 (LBCO) was the very first high Tc superconductor, discovered by J. G. Bednorz and K. A. Muller in 1986. However, it has been much less extensively studied than other high Tc materials, due to the difficulty of growing la...

Packet transmission scheduling plays a key role in Quality of Service (QoS) support for real-time traffic and efficient radio resource utilization in a wireless mesh network (WMN). It is a highly complicated problem due to the fact that any scheduling decision at one mesh access point (AP) may affect the scheduling decisions in the entire network. The strict delay requirement of real-time ap...

Effect of Aperture Variability, Specific Discharge, and Ionic Strength on Colloid Transport in Single Fractures

An improved understanding of colloid transport in fractured media is required to assess the potential for microorganisms to contaminate groundwater, to develop groundwater management/protection plans, to design remedial action strategies based on the application of microorganisms, and to quantify colloid-facilitated transport of many organic and inorganic contaminants. Although colloid trans...

About MacSphere

MacSphere is McMaster University’s Institutional Repository(IR). The purpose of an IR is to bring together all of a University's research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research. The research and scholarly output included in MacSphere has been selected and deposited by the individual university departments and centres on campus.

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